Schmitt on Modernity

Carl Schmitt’s diagnosis of the calcified utopia of Modernity is exactly what Latour would agree with: for both, the solution is political theology as that which guarantees the progressive composition of this world.

They wanted heaven on earth, heaven as the result of trade and industry, a heaven that is really supposed to be here on earth […] they did not want a God of love and grace; they had ‘made’ so much that was astonishing; why should they not ‘make’ the tower of an earthly heaven? After all, the most important and last things had already been secularised’ in Schmitt, Carl, Theodor Däublers ‘Nordlicht’ – Drei Studien über die Elemente, den Geist und die Aktualität des Werkes. München 1916, pp.64-65